


Gripped

by followthattardis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Boners, Fluff, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Shipper!Sam, inappropriate iPhone case descriptions, no really plenty of boners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 06:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2802521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followthattardis/pseuds/followthattardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Cas tries to buy an iPhone case, Sam tries not to laugh, and Dean tries to hide his boner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gripped

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adametogankfor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adametogankfor/gifts).



> All quotations Cas reads out are 100% authentic - they inspired me to write this fic in the first place. Them and my friend, to whom this work is dedicated and who will have to forgive me for shamelessly using a couple of lines she came up with. Merry Christmas, N.
> 
> Also, please remember to read all the iPhone case descriptions in Cas's voice. Trust me, it'll be worth it.

“You’ll feel it with the first touch.”

Dean’s beer travels up his nose and he gurgles, trying to force it back down. He pushes himself up on the sofa he’s been slouching on, because his horizontal position suddenly feels inappropriate.

“What did you say?”

Cas looks up from across the table where he’s sitting, forearms resting elegantly on either side of Sam’s laptop. His expression is as grave as if he was about to give a eulogy.

“I said, ‘You’ll feel it with the first touch’. Does that sound appealing to you, Dean?”

Dean’s fingers twitch spasmodically around his beer bottle.

“I- Sorry, _what_?”

“It’s very complicated,” Cas mutters, head ducking back to the computer screen.

Dean stares at him hopelessly before turning to Sam for help.

“What the hell is he talking about?”

Sam swallows down his bite of sandwich and shrugs, smiling.

“What are you asking me for. He’s sitting right there.”

Cas doesn’t seem to register their conversation, eyes flickering across the screen with utmost concentration.

“Made to be touched,” he murmurs.

Dean’s palm tightens around the neck of his bottle and he does his very best to assume a neutral tone, perhaps with only a dash of mild curiosity.

“Whatcha reading, Cas?”

When there’s no answer, Dean gives Sam a pointed look. _Come on, you bastard. You know what he’s doing. You wouldn’t have given him your laptop if he hadn’t told you why he needed it._

Sam grins devilishly around another bite of his sandwich. He’s enjoying this way too much for Dean’s liking.

“I believe he’s trying to find a case for the iPhone you bought him,” he explains finally.

Dean’s eyes wander back to Cas, who seems completely engrossed in whatever it is he’s actually doing.

“Looking for an iPhone case,” he repeats skeptically. “Seriously?”

“It’s an important decision to make, Dean,” Cas says all of a sudden, lifting his eyes. “Apparently, the device you have given me is tremendously expensive, and I want to ensure that it has the best protection possible.”

Sam smiles at Dean smugly.

“See? It’s just iPhone cases.”

“That soft porn is iPhone case descriptions? You have got to be kidding me.”

Sam does his best not to laugh and turns to Castiel instead.

“Hey, Cas, could you read us some more? We’ll help you choose.”

Oh God. Oh no. This is a bad idea. Very, very bad idea.

“Sam, you fucker,” Dean grits out, but then he looks over at Cas, who might as well have the word ‘relief’ written across his forehead.

“Would you?” he asks. “That is very kind of you.” He tilts the screen back a bit and clears his throat.

Oh no. No no no.

“This one, for instance, promises ‘great feel and a good grip’. Sounds very convenient.”

Sam nods seriously. He’s looking directly at Cas, all innocence and helpfulness, but every few seconds his eyes sweep to Dean and give him a wink that Sam is going to pay for very dearly later.

“It does indeed. Both great feel and good grip are essential.”

Cas latches on to Sam’s words as if they were gospel.

“I see. I can imagine how good grip would be helpful. But there is also another case the purchase of which I am considering, and this one assures ‘comfortable usability that fits perfectly in your hand.’ Although it’s weirdly phrased, it sounds important too.”

Sam has more and more trouble keeping a straight face, but luckily years of impersonating FBI agents help him through it.

“You’re right, it is important. Tough choice. What else you got?”

Cas props his chin on his left hand and switches tabs.

“The manufacturer of this case ensures me that ‘It’s exactly what you need for everyday life – when things get hectic.’ What does it mean? I fail to see how using an iPhone could get… hectic.”

The last word is preceded by a hesitant pause, and it sits in the air long after it leaves Cas’s lips.

Dean slams his bottle on the side table and stands up, back turned from Sam (who’s laughing his ass off) and Cas (whose perpetual frown only deepens).

“I’m gonna go do the laundry,” Dean announces desperately.

“Oh no, you can’t go now,” Sam protests immediately. “I have work to do. You stay and help Cas with his... um... purchases, I gotta be off. Sorry, Cas,” he adds, standing up and taking his empty plate with him.

“Don’t worry, Sam, you’ve helped me already. Thank you.”

Sam beams at him as he saunters off, his smile turning mischievous as he walks past Dean.

“I’ll murder you in your sleep,” Dean promises. Sam only grins wider.

When they’re left alone, Dean slides his hand over his face in resignation.

“Alright. Okay. Let’s see what you got there.”

He moves to sit across the table from Cas, determined to finish this as quickly as possible.

Cas switches tabs again and scrolls down a bit.

“According to the retailer, this wallet case ‘has a powerful and seductively understated presence’. I do not understand. How can an iPhone case have a powerful presence? And seductively understated, no less?”

Dean’s fingernails scrape against the leg of the table.

“It’s just marketing speak, Cas. Even people who wrote this shit don’t know what it means, they just think it sounds cool enough to sell the product.”

“Oh.” Cas looks mildly disappointed. “I hoped there was some significance behind the phrase ‘seductively understated presence’. I found it quite intriguing.”

Leaving the beer bottle all the way at the side table was a terrible idea, because Dean really needs something to occupy his hands with. If the porn voice transmitter sitting across from him utters the word ‘seductively’ one more time, Dean will bolt out of the room faster than Balthazar hearing the first notes of My Heart Will Go On.

He shakes his head miserably, shifting in his chair.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s all buzzwords and drivel.”

Cas sighs and switches tabs a couple times more, eyes skittering over the descriptions.

“I do need to choose eventually, and I believe these three cases are the best options. What do you think, Dean? Should I rather choose…”

He leans closer to the screen, eyes blinking against its bright glow.

 “…the one that provides great feel and a good grip…”

(Cas switches tabs. Dean sinks his nails into his thigh.)

“…the one that fits perfectly in your hand…”

(Cas switches tabs. Dean makes a strangled noise that’s so high it’s above hearing range and therefore – _thankfully_ – inaudible.)

“… or the one that was made to be touched?”

Dean doesn’t answer for just a bit too long, which makes Cas looks up from the screen.

“Are you alright? You look a bit flushed,” he says.

“The grip… uh... the one with the good grip sounds… good,” Dean replies weakly. He’s quite proud of himself for managing to form a complete sentence despite the constant thrum of his mind begging _not now boner_ in the background.

“I will buy this one, then. Though I must say the seductively present one sounds appealing too, and- are you sure you’re alright, Dean?”

“Peachy. Be right back.”

Dean Winchester, the fearsome hunter monsters have nightmares about, scrambles to his feet and makes a break for the door, trying to catch the last shreds of his dignity on his way out.

“Fuck.”

“Dean?”

“I’ll be right back, Cas!” 

( _Fuck_.)

 

*

“Cas, I got something for you,” Sam announces. He shrugs off his jacket and throws it over a chair before fishing out a small package from the depths of his bag.

"I went to the post office," he explains, coming over to where Cas sits curled up on the couch, correcting the inaccuracies in the Angelic Encyclopaedia with a red ballpoint pen.

"Is it my iPhone case?" Cas asks curiously, putting down the book.

"See for yourself," Sam smiles.

Cas takes the package from Sam’s hands as gently as if it was a living thing and opens it, ripping a neat line along its edge. Inside, there’s a case in bubble wrap, a brochure, and a few folded pieces of paper stapled together.

"Feels like Christmas, doesn't it?" Dean grins from behind.

Cas turns around just in time to see Dean flip over the back of the couch and settle himself comfortably by Cas's side.

"Go on, open it!" Dean prompts. Sam shakes his head indulgently. His brother has always been a sucker for receiving presents, but even more of a sucker for watching other people unwrap theirs.

"I think I should read this first," Cas says seriously, reaching for the attached papers.

“Nah, dude, it’s probably just an order confirmation or a warranty card or whatever. Open the package."

Dean snatches the papers from under Cas’s fingers, suddenly worried that they might contain some more sexually ambiguous gibberish. He remembers all too well why listening to Cas read out soft porn disguised as a marketing technique is not a good idea.

Cas doesn’t protest, instead placing the bubble wrap on his knee and carefully unwrapping it.

The case is thin and silver, reflecting light as Cas twirls it around and weighs it in his hand.

“Well, put it on,” Sam encourages him.

“I left my phone in-“

“I’ll go get it,” Dean offers quickly, already standing up.

Sam and Cas exchange disbelieving looks, but Dean’s already half way down the corridor. He bursts into Cas’s room, grabs his phone from the nightstand and runs out just as fast, heading to the bathroom.

Never put it past Dean Winchester to excuse himself from the room under the pretense of selflessness to inconspicuously sneak into the bathroom and splash cold water on himself as a necessary – if embarrassing – precaution. Never.

“You know he’s gonna do it. He’s gonna talk about how the phone case… _sits_ , or _fits_ , or some shit. But you’ll get through it. You can do it,” he tells his reflection, sprinkling icy cold water over his wrists and neck. “No boners today. None at all. Okay?” He can almost swear that Mirror-Dean smirks at him.

“Wow. Great pep talk, Dean. Truly inspiring.”

“Fuck off,” Dean mutters, turning the tap all the way so that the stream of water pouring into the sink is about two degrees from freezing.

“How about instead of taking a cold shower like a horny teenager you examine _why_ you’re getting boner after boner for your best friend?” Mirror-Dean suggests.

“It’s just physiology, and also, did I mention fuck off?” Dean mumbles under his breath.

“Physiology, you say. So you think it’s normal to get a hard-on for your friends?”

“Listen!” Dean barks out, but when his head snaps up from the sink, Mirror-Dean is gone and Dean is staring at himself again.

“Fuck. I’m so fucked,” he concedes. He turns off the tap and dries his hands off.

When he comes back to the room, Cas doesn’t notice the trickle of water running down his neck. Unfortunately, Sam does, but to his credit, he makes a great effort not to laugh too openly.

“You okay, Dean? That took you long enough.”

Dean’s expression is positively murderous.

“Shut up, Sam.”

He drops the phone into Cas’s open palm and flops back onto the couch next to him.

“Do you need help?”

Cas shakes his head.

“No, I think I can manage.”

He studies both the case and the phone for a moment, as if he was playing out all the possible configurations in full 3D in his head (which he probably is), before gently placing the phone over the case and pushing it in with his knuckles. They hear an affirmative _click_ and Cas lifts it up for them to see.

“Did I do it correctly?”

“Move it around, see if it falls out,” Sam suggests.

Cas shakes the phone awkwardly, waving it around and turning it upside down. It seems to sit tightly, but Dean can already spy the little crease on Cas’s forehead that tells him something isn’t quite right.

“I don’t understand,” Cas says. “I was supposed to feel it with the first touch.”

Dean chokes.

“What?”

“The website said I would feel it with the first touch, but I am not feeling anything. Perhaps I am touching it wrong. Could you check?” Cas holds the phone out to Dean, eyes wide and pleading and completely innocent even as he recites lines straight from every porn movie Dean has ever seen.

Mortified, Dean takes the phone and lets it lie flat in his palm. He looks up and meets Cas’s gaze, as focused as if they were assessing the authenticity of Koh-i-Noor.

“Do you feel it?” Cas asks seriously.

“I’m gonna go,” Sam says, and practically runs off, barely managing to contain an evil cackle rising in his chest.

“No, Sam, stay h-“

“I think you are doing it wrong.”

Dean is concentrating so hard on imagining ingenious ways to punish Sam for being a prick that he loses a beat.

“What?”

“The device,” Cas says, nodding towards the phone in Dean’s hand. “The woman in the picture here” - he taps the brochure that came bundled with the case - “is holding it differently than you. You need to wrap your hand around it.”

Fuck. All that water wasted for nothing.

“I... what?”

“Just grip it tighter,” Cas advises him.

 _Stop talking_ , Dean’s brain screams as it starts turning into cotton candy.

“What?” he repeats helplessly.

Unexpectedly, Cas’s face breaks into a gentle smile. It’s barely there, but... it’s there.

“Grip it like I gripped you, Dean.”

Cotton candy, cotton candy _everywhere_.

”What.”

“When I raised you from perdition, Dean.”

 _Oh God_. As if the hot-chocolate voice and the dirty innuendos weren’t enough, now Cas has to remind him he has a sense of humor. This weird, incomprehensible, unique, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sense of humor. Oh _no_.

“To be fair, this phone is not nearly as righteous as you are – after all, it is an inanimate object and therefore cannot be righteous – but I suggest we give it a try. In my experience, good things happen when you grip things tightly.”

He’s full-on smiling now, as wide as Dean has ever seen him smile.

Castiel is making a joke about how they first met, and Dean just wants to die.

“Cas-”

“Shall we try it together?”

Before Dean can as much as blink, Cas’s fingers wrap themselves around Dean’s hand and the phone.

Cas frowns.

Dean sees black spots.

“I still don’t feel anything, like the manufacturer of this device promised I would,” Cas decides. “It is simply a piece of silicone, nothing more. But there is one thing that worries me,” he adds, and he does look genuinely concerned. Dean’s not sure if he can – no, bullshit, he’s 100% sure he _can’t_ handle whatever it is Cas is about to say.

“Your pulse is racing, Dean. Are you feeling alright?”

_No, you idiot._

“Yeah, great. Great.”

Cas doesn’t seem convinced in the least.

“You always say that because you do not want me and Sam to worry, but your physiology betrays you. If I’m not mistaken, your heart rate is over 90 beats per minute, which is highly unusual for a young, fit person like you.”

“Jesus, Cas, I’m _fine_.”

Cas grips Dean’s wrist tighter and lets the phone fall down to the couch between them.

“You shouldn’t throw your phone around like that,” Dean blurts out, just to say something.

“But this is why I bought a case for it,” Cas protests. The tips of his fingers rest against the inside of Dean’s wrist as he counts the beats.

“Cas, for the love of-“ Dean begins, trying to free his hand from the iron-like grip. Cas doesn’t let go.

“Are you scared? Or agitated?” he demands. “Your pulse is going wild.”

“That’s probably because I’m upset,” Dean snaps, and finally succeeds in releasing his hand.

He immediately regrets it when he sees the look on Cas’s face.

“Was it me that upset you?”

“No. No, just...”

Dean stutters, because what can he say?

Mirror-Dean was right. This is not just his own physiology screwing with him. This is something else, something more, something that scares the crap out of him. 

In a moment of honesty as rare as harmless angels and merciful demons, Dean Winchester looks up at his best friend and says:

"I'm upset because of you, but it's not your fault."

Cas looks stunned for a moment, and Dean mentally bangs his hand against a wall.

_You just had to go there and say something stupid and open that door and now-_

“I don’t understand. How can I be the reason for your distress without being at fault? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“A lot of human things don’t,” Dean replies grimly.

“But how can I make it better if I don’t know how I’m upsetting you?” Cas pushes on, and Dean could honestly cry right now, if only his manly tear ducts would allow it.

He could cry even more when he realizes he could answer that question in a plain, straightforward way that Cas would easily understand. _How can you make it better? Very simple. Don’t touch my wrist like that. Don’t touch me at all. Don’t say ambiguously dirty things in my presence. In fact, don’t use that deep voice of yours at all when I’m around. Don’t touch me, don’t look at me, don’t speak to me, don’t exist near me and I’ll be just fine._

“It’s just something I have to figure out on my own,” Dean manages at last. He stands up and forces himself to pat Cas’s shoulder in a way platonic friends do.

“I’ll be off now, okay?”

Cas still looks fairly worried, but he doesn’t stop him. Instead, he nods and falls back to the couch, picking up the abandoned phone.

“Maybe that mysterious sensation they promised doesn’t always come with the first touch,” he says quietly, and it's not entirely obvious who he’s talking to. “Maybe it will come in time.”

Dean stills. He should go now, he _wants_ to go, but-

He’s suddenly overcome with a chilling realization that perhaps Castiel is much more aware of certain human things than Dean originally assumed.

When he finally finds it in himself to leave the room, he goes to lock himself in the bathroom like an emotionally unstable teenage girl he is. He lets the water run at full force and leans heavily against the sink, palms planted on either side of it. Slowly, he takes a few deep breaths and lifts his eyes to the mirror level.

Mirror-Dean grins at him mischievously.

"You ready to talk about it yet?" he asks.

Dean nods at himself in the mirror.

Yeah. He's ready.


End file.
